[Tolo News] Over the past two months, intense murderous Moslem offensives in Helmand...an Afghan province populated mostly by Pashtuns, adjacent to Injun country in Pak Balochistan...
and Nangarhar
The unfortunate Afghan province located adjacent to Mohmand, Kurram, and Khyber Agencies. The capital is Jalalabad. The province was the fief of Younus Khalis after the Soviets departed and one of his sons is the current provincial Taliban commander. Nangarhar is Haqqani country..
province have tested the mettle of the Afghan cops and raised security concerns just months before NATO
...the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. It's headquartered in Belgium. That sez it all....
troops withdraw. According to top Afghan security officials, support from local communities and the air have proven the keys to victory.
Hostilities in Sangeen district of Helmand, and Hesarak district in Nangarhar, while both part of the same summer Taiban offensive, have played out very differently. While in Sangeen the violence rages on, over a month after it began, in Hesarak, turban groups were completely thwarted within a matter of days.
The Defense and Interior ministries have attributed their success in Hesarak to support they received from the local community.
"In Sangeen and two other districts in Helmand, only the Afghan forces are facing the murderous Moslems, but in Hesarak district, people have had a harsh response to the enemy and the snuffies faced a public uprising," Interior Ministry front man Najibullah Danish said.
There are also those who have suggested the determining factor in the success or failure of a counterinsurgency strategy is the presence of air support. With foreign troop winding down in Afghanistan and the NATO coalition taking an increasingly hands-off approach, many have voiced concerns about the Afghan air force and whether or not it is prepared to fill the void that is being left by the western coalition.
"Overall, the foreign forces provided us air support," MoD front man Zahir Azimi acknowledged.
But the security officials remained adamant that it was public support, not foreign aircraft, that made the difference. "It is said that foreign forces also provided air support to the Afghan cops, but public contribution in defeating the snuffies can't be ignored," Danish said.
Security tactics and results have become a bigger focus as the presidential election process slogs on and the fighting season picks up. President Hamid
Maybe I'll join the TalibanKarzai
... A former Baltimore restaurateur, now 12th and current President of Afghanistan, displacing the legitimate president Rabbani in December 2004. He was installed as the dominant political figure after the removal of the Taliban regime in late 2001 in a vain attempt to put a
Pashtunface on the successor state to the Taliban. After the 2004 presidential election, he was declared president regardless of what the actual vote count was. He won a second, even more dubious, five-year-term after the 2009 presidential election. His grip on reality has been slipping steadily since around 2007, probably from heavy drug use...
has received widespread criticism from Afghan politicians and policy experts over his approach to the Taliban, which many consider weak and conciliatory. Chief among those policies have been his ongoing support for the early release of suspected snuffies from prison as well as his recent order that the Afghan forces refrain from using heavy weaponry in fighting turbans.
"All decisions made by the president were against the national interests of Afghanistan, it supported the enemy, and paved the way for the efforts of the enemy and murderous Moslems," military analyst Jawed Kohistan
...a backwoods district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa distinguished by being even more rustic than is the norm among the local Pashtuns....
i told TOLOnews. He added that the recent halt on nighttime raids was advocated for by Karzai and has caused trouble for the country's counterinsurgency efforts.
According to official reports, the battle in Sangeen has led to the deaths of more than 200 civilians and 100 Afghan military personnel. In Hesarak, there have been no civilian casualties reported, but 10 Afghan National Army (ANA) soldiers have been killed.